Tenant ordered to clear garden by landlord

Posted on 14th March 2011

A female tenant from Cambridge has been ordered by her housing association landlord to clear her garden within two weeks or risk having everything seized.

The tenant, Liz Osborn, received a letter last week from the Luminus Group telling her to clear the garden directly underneath her living room window at the house she shares with her partner and two teenage children.

Luminus Group are widely known for their innovative approach to providing social housing, focusing on providing homes which are all covered by landlord insuranceand building sustainable communities for today and for future generations. They sent the letter saying her garden items, such as plant pots, tables and chairs and a barbecue, were taking up far too much space in what is a communal area for use by all tenants.

Ms Osborn claims she had received permission for her vegetable patch and plant pots, she said “When they visited me 18 months ago to inspect a subsidence problem, I mentioned that we wanted to put a little vegetable patch underneath the window and put out a few flower pots. They said that it was fine because the vegetable patch would be under the window in a corner plot and not in anyone’s way, as would the flower pots.”

Ms Osborn also claims she had a similar problem with her satellite dish. One day after the letter arrived, an engineer turned up on behalf of Luminus wanting to take down her Sky dish and aerial.

Luminus replied by saying it is not appropriate for a single household to take over a communal area. They also provided proof that they had written to all tenants about Sky dishes as part of their response to the digital switchover. They plan to replace all communal television with a system that is compatible with the new digital changeover.